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The House overturned a vote on a budget bill late Monday to reduce the scope of a powerful surveillance tool after an ugly fight between Republicans, likely to kill it until the next year on plans to renew but also limit a law that has ended the phone at the heart of the program. .
In a hastily arranged closed-door meeting, Republican representatives traded accusations and even insults as they argued over where the two measures to reform the law, known as Section 702, should be put down. Under the law, the government can conduct warrantless surveillance of foreign nationals and sometimes sweep the private messages of Americans.
The dispute dramatically changed Speaker Mike Johnson’s plans to have the House vote on both measures this week and send them to the Senate whichever party gets the majority — a rare move that strongly opposed by conservatives.
“I’ve never seen us bring up so many bills at once from different committees and put them on the floor and have a beauty contest,” said Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky and a member of the Laws Committee, which would have approved the procedure. “I think this will set a terrible precedent for the law.”
Lawmakers in both parties are eager to place limits on the program, which sometimes collects private messages of Americans linked to foreign surveillance targets. They are most at odds over the severity of the restrictions on officials to intercept U.S. communications at the time it was collected — and Mr. Johnson one way to another.
On the one hand, progressive Democrats have joined forces with former President Donald J. Trump’s Republican allies to assemble a Judiciary Committee Bill it would significantly limit the law while improving protections for Americans’ civil rights.
On the other hand, centrists and national security hawks have supported a Information Committee Bill will make more modest changes. They have criticized that more law reform could put the country at greater risk from terrorists, hackers, spies and other threats.
Outside groups are also hearing the impact of each bill.
Those who supported the Court’s bill have labeled the enemy of Intelligence as a “wolves in sheep’s clothing,” according to the Brennan Center for Justice, saying that warrantless surveillance would become untenable and would expand the government’s spying powers.
And supporters of the Intelligence bill have called the Court’s version “grossly wrong,” viz a letter on Monday signed by three dozen former senior national security officials argue. They added that it would weaken the government’s ability to use information it legally collects to protect Americans and prosecute various crimes.
At a meeting of the Information Committee last week, representative Michael R. Turner, Republican of Ohio and chairman of the panel, announced that in the bill are serious flaws.
“Under their bill, 702 information will not be admissible in criminal prosecutions for serious crimes such as child pornography, human trafficking, murder and even money laundering,” he said.
Mr. Turner argued behind closed doors on Monday evening, angering those who supported the Court’s bill.
“The limit is, for American citizens you get a warrant,” said Representative Warren Davidson, Republican of Ohio, to reporters, after secretly accusing Mr. Turner on the falsification of the Judiciary committee bill. He charged that those who support the Intelligence Committee bill “want to be like a police state where you can’t get a warrant.”
First enacted in 2008, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legalized a system of secret surveillance programs initiated by the Bush administration after the attacks. terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Under Section 702, the government is empowered to collect, without warrants and from domestic companies like AT&T and Google, messages of non-citizens abroad — even if those goals are related to the American people. As a result, the government sometimes collects private messages of Americans without a warrant.
Congress has moved several times — in 2012 and again in 2018 — to expand Section 702. The law is set to expire at the end of the month, though the surveillance program itself could continue. continue to operate until April.
But now the outcome of the law is less certain.
Civil liberties-minded Democrats who have long been skeptical of the program have joined right-wing Republicans who are arming themselves with Mr. Trump to the FBI because of the investigation into his campaign partners’ 2016 ties with Russia.
And revelations that FBI investigators broke some of the rules for when they searched for American information have helped fuel the push for major changes.
The FBI has already implemented the internal changes mandated by the Intelligence bill into law, while reducing by 90 percent the number of agency personnel who have access to sensitive network data.
The contested Court bill would go forward, requiring officers to obtain a warrant before questioning a warehouse using a U.S. name or other identification.
Proponents of the privacy law and those who support the Court’s proposed warrants it is necessary as a matter of principle and to avoid abuse. But the Biden administration said that they would eliminate the effectiveness of the program and endanger the country, including the fight against terrorism that arose from the Israel-Hamas war.
“The bill coming out of the House Judiciary Committee would completely destroy the core of 702 and severely limit our ability to protect the nation,” said Joshua Geltzer, an official of the White House government security, adding that the administration is very interested in the threat law.
The bills differ in other important ways, including whether the government can buy information about Americans from intelligence agencies, the types of crimes that prosecutors can use Section 702 information as evidence and the types of companies that can be encouraged to participate in the program.
While politicians debated the importance of the law, some looked to the defense authorization law, which has a short extension of the program without changes until mid-April. The bill is scheduled for a vote sometime this week.
Mr. has tried Johnson paints the short-term extension as a cheap way to buy negotiation time.
But the extension would create a window for an oversight court to issue new annual rules to allow the program to operate through April 2025 — even if the original law expires after mid-April 2024.
Representative Chip Roy, Republican of Texas and a prominent member of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, which opposed the short extension, said Monday he opposes what he called “jam- through extension” of Section 702 “will kick in. until April of 25.
“That’s how we have motivation to do our work,” said Mr. Roy.